Michael Boyle's weblog
Really? Seems like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, no?
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced that it expected to run out of special visas by June 1. The visas are for Afghans who are in danger because they assisted the U.S. mission.
Or, Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause
This piece originally appeared at Just Security. According to the Supreme Court, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” But that command is apparently not clear enough for President Donald Trump. On Friday he signed an executive order on refugees that imposes a selective ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries as well as establishes preferential treatment for refugees seeking asylum who are identified with “minority religions” in their country of origin. In case there was any doubt about the latter provision’s intent, Trump told Christian Broadcast News that it was intended to give priority to “Christians” seeking asylum over “Muslims.” In both respects, the executive order violates the “clearest command of the Establishment Clause.”
This is a disgusting blanket “solution” that has caught up refugees from ISIS, US-Government employed interpreters who put their and their family’s lives on the line for years, and although it cites 9/11 directly, doesn’t in fact cover the country from which most of those terrorists came, Saudi Arabia.
The only silver lining is that the courts will be busy establishing all sorts of binding precedents on this kind of issue in the coming weeks and months.
One day after President Trump signed executive order halting the admittance of all refugees to the United States, and temporarily freezing immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, the effects of that freeze are already beginning to be seen at airports both in the U.S. and abroad.
Several Iraqi refugees in Cairo, who had been cleared for resettlement in the U.S., have been blocked from boarding their flight to New York City. And in Iraq, NPR’s Jane Arraf reports that “members of Yazidi minority, one of the biggest victims of ISIS, were prevented from boarding despite having visas.”
Source: Arrivals To U.S. Blocked And Detained As Trump’s Immigration Freeze Sets In : The Two-Way : NPR
